It's not about the slides

This week I've been preparing for a train-the-trainer session, and part of that process involved going through my slide deck. As I was refining a few sections I had the strange realization that I haven't changed many of the slides since I first created them ten years ago. Yet they still work, because of something invisible but powerful - cognitive sequence.

These slides have been shown to tens of thousands of people in all kinds of environments - conference rooms, boardrooms, team sessions, on stages. Looking at them again I realize that they're quite basic, especially compared to what's possible now. I made all of the graphics myself using PowerPoint shapes.

What makes them effective isn't the slides themselves, but the concepts behind them and how those ideas are structured.

I see this so often when people are preparing for an important presentation. A disproportionate amount of time gets spent on formatting, layout, wording, and visual aesthetics. It makes sense, because those are the parts we can see and control, and improving them gives the feeling that we're making progress. But they're not what determines whether the idea actually lands or holds value.

We've all seen highly polished presentations fall flat because the audience couldn't connect with their message, and I've seen speakers with no slides at all hold a room because their ideas were organized in a way that made sense for different ways of thinking.

When we let go of the need to control every detail, we can focus on connecting with the audience in a way their brains can actually process.

The most effective communicators don't rely on perfect slides. They organize their thinking so that it lands clearly, regardless of who is in the room.

And if you're wondering, I am still using PowerPoint shapes to make my graphics.

Gregor